How often do you fish the banks or do you ever fish the banks.. I’m asking bc a few times I’ve been out and OVERHEAR a lot of”my boat this and that”..if I were a boat owner I would fish the banks like an eclipse..rarely. 
Might shore fish twice a year…three times this year. Fished for chubs tonight with rrr’s short pole.
…but I’m looking at it from a river guy point of view. Prior to falling in love with the Mississippi with all of it’s good and bad, I would fish in my 14 foot Blue Fin twice, maybe three times per year.
Wader and a fly rod for pan fish. (I don’t like fishing with a fly rod out of a boat.)
Comes down to time management for me. Got a nice lil rig that just recently got setup with some nice rod holders 
, although mostly what holds my rod nowadays is a root system of some sort or well placed rocks . 3 kids with dance, gymnastics, softball, leaves very little time for hauling the boat to the launch, getting it setup on the car, packing it away. Most my outings are probably about 2hrs average do don’t want to spend half of it getting the boat on and off the water.
With this high water nowadays I would be mostly anchoring about 5′ off shore anyways so as long as their is some type of access to shoreline I’ll find it.
Think it comes down to you want what you ain’t got and when you got it it ain’t that big of a deal. When it comes to river fishing that is.
Once I got my boats it became less and less 
but now that I’m running my Ranger I rarely if ever fish from shore. I enjoy fishing from my boat to much, so when she says lets go fishing it’s hard for me to turn her down 
Quote:
How often do you fish the banks or do you ever fish the banks.. I’m asking bc a few times I’ve been out and OVERHEAR a lot of”my boat this and that”..if I were a boat owner I would fish the banks like an eclipse..rarely.
I took a shore fishing buddy fishing once. He is a great shore fisherman. We struggled most the morning getting the fish to bite even though we knew they were there.
We beached the boat and fished the spot from shore. Hammered the walleye/sauger there. I kept thinking to myself how sad it was we beached a 40k boat to fish from shore.
The fish that day wanted the baits swimming towards the shore. That was the natural presentation.
It depends on where the bite is here and what time of year. Springtime fishing for me and a couple friends and its from the boat. We run trotlines and dittypoles and there’s no way you can do that without a boat, waters too deep alot of the times. Once in awhile theres a good bite for flatheads off the dam here in town and once in awhile I want to fish from the bank anyway, just a simple walk to the bank and sit in a chair and even bobber fishing is enjoyable to do.
One of the places where I like to fish from shore is simple chub fishing. Where this hole is there’s hundreds of them and their so pretty with their spring spawning colors, its nice to see all their colors at different times of the year. Sometimes just simple fishing is easier then packing up the boat and getting or buying the bait you’ll need. Pull up a small chair and a small cooler for something to drink and float a bobber and watch it go down.
I used to fish the banks, stand/wade and cast from shore, etc maybe 3-4 times a year. Then I took a statin cholesterol medicine and it ruined my legs. They are stiff and ache 100% of the time now…permanent damage. Obviously I have a boat now and cast from a seated position.
Nothing wrong with bank fishing. Its great to be able to pull up somewhere to get out and walk around. Boating to a bank spot is a great way to get to those areas you cant walk into. There are some real hidden gems out there. When taking the kids swimming during the summer Im always bank fishing. Biggest problem is kids on inner tubes drifting through my lines.
I still bank fish a fair amount. Usually rivers that I cannot launch my boat on. I wade fish at least a few times a year as well. As long as I can reach fish I would rather not hassle with the boat. Kinda like ice fishing.
I have a 16′ tiller that hardly sees the water until fall. It’s a lot less hassle shore fishing than putting up with the jet skies and water skiers plus the boat ramp docks seem to attract sun bathers who have so much junk on the dock, you can’t even walk on it. I’m retired so if things aren’t flooded, I fish a little bit almost every day. I just take 1/16,1/8, and 1/4 oz. unpainted jig heads with some plastics and almost always catch something. Probably 90% of my fishing is from shore.
Now, if I lived in a different area, like closer to the Mississippi or some Minn. or Wisc. lakes, it would be a different story.
I usually fish where the depth of water is from 6 to 10 feet and constant flow of water.
Quote:
I used to fish the banks, stand/wade and cast from shore, etc maybe 3-4 times a year. Then I took a statin cholesterol medicine and it ruined my legs. They are stiff and ache 100% of the time now…permanent damage. Obviously I have a boat now and cast from a seated position.
Wouldn’t that be nice if your medical insurance covered the boat. I mean, it is a medical reason why you can’t fish from shore.
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
